Gold is tough for his suppliers to clean for minting from what I remember Casascius saying. That said, I'd probably be interested in buying a few of these as well. Even a 5 or 1 BTC 1 oz gold coin would be interesting.

Come to think of it, now that Casascius has the name recognition, he should honestly just roll his own non-BTC precious metals coins. They'd probably still sell at a very slight premium (ie, maybe not on the level of Krugerrands or Pamp Suisse or even Canadian Maple Leafs, but still at a premium).

Just a quick question for anyone with a gold plated savings bar.How are you currently storing these? Are there air-tites available to fit or you putting them in a sleeve? I'm having trouble sourcing something decent to hold them in.

Forgot to add..... country centric markings also mitigate the loss of confidence around the world, due to the fraud that will operate in this space soon.

As you were.

Cryptography is one of those things that gives me a leg up on every possible counterfeited item in the world.

I assume my product WILL be counterfeited. But when I start producing digitally signed PDF photos of my own product, I've got the counterfeiters beat. The more possible I can make it for you guys to authenticate my genuine products, the more value a genuine product will have, and the less lucrative it will be to counterfeit them.

This will only work for products I produce from today forward, but here is an idea you can do right now. The counterfeiting hasn't happened yet. Go throw your current stash of Casascius Coins on a scanner, scan a photo of them, take a 160-bit hash of the file, and then work that hash into the block chain somehow. Convert the hash to a bitcoin address and send a satoshi to it (my Bitcoin Address Utility can do this, for example). Your photo with its supporting hash in the block chain will be publicly verifiable proof that the coin in your photo existed today.

somehow? The how just got a lot easier... you can now use http://certificates.0x0000.de for this (just upload photo, site inserts hash into blockchain, you also get a certificate summarizing info about coin and proof-of-age. We'll even print and mail you the certificate optinally).

How much of a price premium people pay for a 1, 10, ... physical bitcoins versus the BTCUSD rate?

TL;DR:I theorize the existence of any collectible market relies on premiums being attached to the commodity upon which they are based. In this case, casascius coins premiums will be measured in terms of BTC, not USD.

I've resisted thinking of it in terms of a premium that in any way ties to USD. Doing that would make these coins an anti-investment - given an upward price of the commodity upon which the coins are based, one would always have more worth by investing in the raw form of Bitcoins than in investing in the coins.

A simple example, presuming a meteoric rise in BTC price from $10 to $1000. Two investors each put $1000 into Bitcoin, one buying casascius coins, the other buying electronically-stored Bitcoins.

Joe buys 100 Bitcoins at $10 apiece. For simplicity, say Bitcoin spot is at $5, and $5 was a premium for the coin.Jane uses the same $1000, but buys 200 Bitcoins and puts them in a market.

Bitcoin goes from spot of $5 to spot of $1000.

Joe has 100 Bitcoins with a spot value of $100,000. Plus a premium of Jane has 200 Bitcoins with a spot value of $200,000.

So the question remains - what is the premium? Possibilities:A) A fixed USD premium. Joe paid a $5 premium when he bought them, that same premium remains.B) A fixed BTC premium. Joe paid a 1.0 BTC premium when he bought them, that same premium remains.

Looking at each scenario:A) Joe's adds $5 for each of his 100 BTC, taking his $100,000 in spot up to a net value of $100,500.Jane adds $0 for each of her 200 BTC, taking her $200,000 in spot up to a net value of $200,000.

B)Joe's adds $1000 for each of his 100 BTC, taking his $100,000 in spot up to a net value of $200,000.Jane adds $0 for each of her 200 BTC, taking her $200,000 in spot up to a net value of $200,000.

In short, A) is not how a collectible market behaves. If it were, it would not be a collectible market - it would be an anti-collectible market. You only make gains if the underlying commodity decreases in value. Compare 100-year trends of gold spot vs. rare gold coins, or diamonds carat value vs. rarer quality/size specimens.

With the simple example, in B) we see Joe and Jane coming out exactly equal.Whether in the long run Joe's value comes out ahead of or behind Jane has to do with any change in BTC premiums in the secondary market.Whether those premiums are higher or lower than the original premiums that Mike offers will be purely driven by whether future investors perceive a greater value.

I strongly suspect Mike is keenly aware of this. In the same line of thinking, if he were to lower the premiums on his offerings, this would create a disincentive to buy today - and an incentive to buy later. That doesn't foster growth in a collectible market - it motivates everyone to dump their coins.

There's a whole 'nother layer that looks at whether BTC premiums scale additively or multiplicatively. And some details around how as prices rise, older coins price themselves out of the general collectible market, enter a dead zone, then will re-emerge in the elite collectible market, with a different investor base representing the buyers. But they're just that - theories. Ultimately, it will be the behavior of us, the buyers and sellers of these coins, that define the market, and its behavior.

I cringe when I see people that are sitting on gold mines - early, high-end collectible coins - dumping them for fear that model A) represents the future, and they're better off converting to plain BTC before they lose out. This question that S3052 asked - it gets visited in nearly every coin transaction I conduct. I'm hoping to get these concepts out there, so that current holders won't release their coins to new holders, based purely on fear and a lack of information/collectible market behavior.

If this seems off-topic for this thread, I apologize. It has long struck me as the largest piece of misunderstood data standing in the way of the collectible bitcoin market absolutely taking off. If this does seem on-topic, I'd highly value the thoughts of others, especially Mike.

TL;DR:I theorize the existence of any collectible market relies on premiums being attached to the commodity upon which they are based. In this case, casascius coins premiums will be measured in terms of BTC, not USD....B)Joe's adds $1000 for each of his 100 BTC, taking his $100,000 in spot up to a net value of $200,000.Jane adds $0 for each of her 200 BTC, taking her $200,000 in spot up to a net value of $200,000.

I agree, but don't forget scenario C:

Joe's can add only $500 for each of his 100 BTC, taking his $100,000 in spot up to a net value of $150,000.Jane adds $0 for each of her 200 BTC, taking her $200,000 in spot up to a net value of $200,000.

The premium is what the market will support, not an arbitrary value set by the seller. If the premium is high at the start, it might fall. This is what happened with Casascius' 1 BTC Silver coins.

TL;DR:I theorize the existence of any collectible market relies on premiums being attached to the commodity upon which they are based. In this case, casascius coins premiums will be measured in terms of BTC, not USD....B)Joe's adds $1000 for each of his 100 BTC, taking his $100,000 in spot up to a net value of $200,000.Jane adds $0 for each of her 200 BTC, taking her $200,000 in spot up to a net value of $200,000.

I agree, but don't forget scenario C:

Joe's can add only $500 for each of his 100 BTC, taking his $100,000 in spot up to a net value of $150,000.Jane adds $0 for each of her 200 BTC, taking her $200,000 in spot up to a net value of $200,000.

The premium is what the market will support, not an arbitrary value set by the seller. If the premium is high at the start, it might fall. This is what happened with Casascius' 1 BTC Silver coins.

With the simple example, in B) we see Joe and Jane coming out exactly equal.Whether in the long run Joe's value comes out ahead of or behind Jane has to do with any change in BTC premiums in the secondary market.Whether those premiums are higher or lower than the original premiums that Mike offers will be purely driven by whether future investors perceive a greater value.

I was trying to keep the example simple so the post could focus on one point: That those premiums, while potentially higher or lower than initial offering price - are measured and evaluated in terms of BTC, and not USD. Exploring the reasons why those premiums might increase or decrease, while remaining in terms of BTC...I see that as a separate but equally fascinating topic to explore.

How much of a price premium people pay for a 1, 10, ... physical bitcoins versus the BTCUSD rate?

Remember that the coins sold for 1.20-1.25 BTC, but have 1BTC of digital currency. One would expect a coin to retain this value when resold. Spending the coin likely destroys the price premium paid for it (e.g., is a spent coin worth 0.25 BTC?).

This question is whether a $400 1.00 BTC coin is still worth 0.25 BTC mint cost, a premium of $100. I think it has been established that the numismatic value at least has maintained the original BTC premium, but it is still market/buyer dependent.

A coin with money added is worth just the money added; anybody can add money to a coin. Maybe it even removes utility from the coin, since it can't be handed over at face value any more.